“When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.” ― Edward Teller

It’s Christmas at the Pearson-Albano household.

We have beautiful cards from family and friends wishing us peace, love, joy and happiness.

And I’m all for peace, love, joy and happiness. But something I don’t hear much about during the holidays is Faith.

Now I am not a religious woman in the traditional sense, but I did grow up with a family full of Baptists. So I know the word Faith is thrown around quite a bit in certain circles.

And I figured since the pious speak of it, Faith has to be important.

But I never really got it.

Until I started doing “faith.”

See there are some things that we try to understand on an intellectual level, but that we can never truly understand until we “get” them on an energetic level. Until the knowing vibrates down to the bone. And I think faith is one of them.

Brene Brown says this about courage:

“You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.”

And I think this is also true about faith. You learn faith by practicing faith.

You have to risk. You have to screw up. You have to look silly. You have to expose yourself. You have to be vulnerable. You have to be willing to love for the sake of love. You have to trust. All in order to know faith.

The paradox of faith is that it pushes you into uncertainty and discomfort, but without it there is no peace. No love. No joy. No happiness.

I said to my Dad recently: “Faith, Hope and Charity and the greatest of these is Hope” – he corrected me by saying that the greatest was Love and its now nice to see Faith get a mention. Having said that I did actually say that Faith was one of the gifts handed down to me at a eulogy during my Dad’s 75th birthday – I am not so sure that I have passed the same baton onto my offspring though. I wonder how it was done.

Amy, I could not agree more! Faith gets overlooked a lot. In fact, I just wrote about Faith for the group of coaches I work with. I used to struggle with it, but it gets easier everyday. I guess that’s why it’s such a big part of the work I do. Faith in your calling, faith in your dreams, faith in yourself can be shaken when it seems that reality doesn’t jibe with what you want or expect, but that’s when you need it most.
Thank you for sharing your wish with us!
Big love, theresa

Wow- great article and I love your comment Rebecca. Peace is the way – also advocated in his book of the same name by Deepak Chopra – and it makes so much sense – internal reality above all else as the primary concern.